South Euclid-Lyndhurst Schools discusses report card, strategic plan

South Euclid-Lyndhurst Schools on Wednesday hosted a public forum called “Overcoming Change” in the Brush High School Performing Arts Center.
The forum focused on the new state report card for school districts as well as the school’s strategic plan.
Superintendent Linda N. Reid said hosting a public forum is an attempt to create more direct communication between the district and the community as a whole.
“The state report card is one measurement of a school district’s progress and achievement,” Reid said. “It’s not the only measurement, however, it’s our most public measurement, and it’s very important to understand what the state report card is and isn’t.”
School districts in Ohio now receive “A” through “F” letter grades on their state report cards. Now districts are graded in graduation, achievement, progress and gap closing. Starting in 2015, districts also will be graded in K-3 literacy rate and prepared for success categories and also will receive an overall grade.
The administrators discussed the district’s strategic plan, which included the vision to make South Euclid-Lyndhurst “the destination school community.”
Strategies to make this happen include auditing the gifted program, new emphasis on “student growth measures accompanied by letter grade performance,” and increasing achievement for all students in English/language arts and math.
Assistant Superintendent Veronica Motley said the district used “Race to the Top” funds to purchase assessment programs that will allow teachers to monitor student growth in real time.
“Students would take the OAA or OGT in the spring and get the data in the summer,” Motley said. “By the time kids came back they were in a different grade level and there wouldn’t be any time to make adjustments to their instruction because the data was old.”
Instead of waiting for the results to come back, the new programs will allow for teachers to monitor student progress and allow them to modify their instruction along the way.
Students will be benchmarked three or four times throughout the year to ensure students are going through growth.
“You probably remember as a kid your parents would measure your height against the door jamb and they would measure it with stickers or with your name and you would have it measured three or four times within a year,” Motley. “Sometimes when you go back to your childhood home, you can still see the notches. Pretty much, that’s what benchmarking does.”
Parents also will receive reports on how their children are doing on the benchmark tests.
The administrators ended the forum with a question-and-answer session. Reid said there will be more public forums throughout the school year including a “state of the schools address” in May.